Dana's Reviews > We Three Queens

2.5 stars. I think we're nearing the end of Georgie and Darcy. For a mystery series, there's no actual mystery in the book until 3/4 of the way in.

(view spoiler)[Mrs. Simpson is staying at Eynsleigh to hide out from the press while the King tries to figure out how he can have her and the crown. She's also apparently hiding out from the book itself, as she's only in one or two scenes before she "disappears" from the house, never to be heard from again during the rest of the story. No one seems all that worried, and gee what a shock, she left to go back to the King. Seems pointless to even have had her there just so that there can be a couple of paragraphs in an Epilogue mentioning the abdication. There were other ways to combine actual history with this series, so it's a missed opportunity.

One of the child actors gets "kidnapped," only she wasn't. It was easy to figure out early on it was a publicity scam, and the child's mother wasn't even that good at the scamming. She managed to get Sir Hubert to give her the £10,000 to pay the "kidnappers," but then wasn't smart enough to leave with the money before she was found out. She got found out but Darcy and Georgie refused to report it to the police, Sir Hubert got the money back, so this whole storyline was also pointless as everything went back to square one. (hide spoiler)]

By the time the actress' murder happened, it was very anti-climatic. (view spoiler)[No one seemed to care all that much (except the director who was more worried about his film), and the leaps Georgie has to take to get to the murderer (who doesn't even appear in the novel until he's caught) (hide spoiler)] are all signs that Bowen either got stuck or just doesn't care much anymore. And if she doesn't care, why should the readers?

If this is the end, it's certainly a terrible let-down for those of us who love these characters. And if there's more, then hopefully this is a blip and the next book will be more of what we're accustomed to reading.